Photo answers review
Photo answers rating 
It’s not always practical to carry a laptop to backup your shots when out on a shoot. Multimedia viewers with large capacity storage provide a compact and lightweight solution. The only problem is that these have traditionally been expensive, until now.
The Digimate V Photobank & MP4 is a multi-format picture viewer, RAW viewer (supported RAW files include most but not all models from Canon, Minolta, Nikon, Olympus, Pentax, Fujifilm, Sony and Samsung), Ebook viewer, voice recorder, MP4 and MP3 player. This means you can save and view images with the same player you use for listening to music and watching video on the move.
This multimedia viewer and image storage solution is seriously cheap. The unit is shipped without a hard drive, allowing you to find a hard drive that fits both your storage requirements and budget. The cheapest 2.5in SATA HD we could find was a 100GB Seagate that cost £27. Combined with the Digimate V, this puts the price of a 100GB image and multimedia viewer at a very reasonable £107, over £70 cheaper than the cheapest complete (HD Included) 100GB multimedia - the Vosonic VP5500 100GB Portable Media Player.
The ability to change the hard drive is a useful function that means the Digimate can keep up as your storage requirements grow. Installation is straightforward so even the least technically minded won’t have to worry.
At First the Digimate was difficult to use and the instructions corresponded poorly with its buttons making it hard to learn how to use it. Battery life is advertised as 10 hours for MP3 playback and two hours for video, although this will vary according to use. On a full charge, we were able to download about 7GB of RAW files and preview just three images before the battery gave in. This means that a spare battery or two are essential extras if you want to guarantee enough power while on location.
The screen is clear enough to review shots, but it’s lower quality than even a mobile phone and considerably lower than that of a DSLR from the last few years. This isn’t a problem if you simply want to use the device for storage, but if you’re looking for something to show shots to family, friends or clients, the screen doesn’t quite cut it.
The Digimate V offers all the functions you’d expect from a multimedia viewer at a fantastic low price. Unfortunately, on this occasion you really do get what you pay for – a sub-standard multimedia viewer that’s awkward to use and has very low battery life. Would it be better if battery life was longer? Probably not, because the menus can be difficult to use and navigating through them using the Digimate’s buttons is hit and miss. If you really need one of these devices, be prepared to pay a bit more for one.